One PITA problem to deal in SCCM with when deploying large application installs like AutoDesk Inventor or Adobe Creative Cloud is the sheer size of the install, which can be 10-20 GBs in size. Well after a fellow Twitterer asked about zipping packages and so forth for deploying large packages and applications in SCCM, I responded with something I do at my organization, and thought I’d share the info. This probably isn’t really anything new, but it’s what I’ve done to solve the problem.

I couldn’t think of an image for this post, so you get Gizmo.

Deploying large packages over the network can take awhile; one solution to this is to compress the contents into a package/application, deploy the compressed contents with the 7-zip executable (and dll), then use the 7-zip .exe to uncompress the contents on the remote device. After the install is complete, just remove the uncompressed contents, and Bob’s your uncle.

This requires the 7z.exe and 7z.dll files, and of course the compressed package in whatever format you want (I prefer .7z).

Below is a batch file I use to perform this task, and I’m using AutoDesk Inventor 2017 as an example. I also have a Github page that has the complete install and uninstall for AutoDesk Inventor.